Bio

Me

My career has always been about turning raw content into an attractive, saleable commodity. After university I spent a few years as a freelance editor, working for most of the main Scottish publishing houses. I then took the plunge (geographically speaking) and came down to England in ’94, working as a book editor for 3 years. In 1995, my job led me to begin work on educational CD-ROMs, which led to the Internet, then any networked device with a screen.

I spent three years working for Entranet, an on-line e-commerce company, setting up and running an interactive channels division (basically building solutions for networked devises that weren't computers - mobile phones, kiosks, settop boxes, games consoles etc). See Past Work for an example (Taxi!) from that time of the work we were pioneering.

In our last year my team delivered over £1m to the company’s turnover. The company grew from a team of 10, when I joined, to 275 – with the third largest turnover of a new media agency in the UK in 2000 (£14m), at which point I decided to start up my own company, Mindhouse.

In October 2001 I set up Mindhouse to prove that iTV / IPTV / Broadband TV didn’t just mean buying pizzas while watching the Simpsons.

Our work was primarily through broadcasters such as Channel 4, the BBC, CNN, Eurosport and others, building a service delivery platform (called Mindset) that allowed editorial staff to setup and run multiple instances of enhanced TV services across multiple middlewares. For example, if you’ve pressed the red button on Channel 4 for Big Brother via Sky, or Cartoon Network on Telewest, to vote or play a quiz then you’ve used our software. Examples of our work can be seen on the Past Work page.

Mindhouse closed its doors after 4 and a half years, with Mindset sold to a competitor. This led me to Aggregator, a new broadband video startup created by two executives from ITV and Sky. Aggregator’s aim was to develop a device-agnostic platform which allowed for the delivery of niche TV via broadband to the home through a range of devices. I joined the team as the fourth member, responsible for realising the design and implementation of the vision, as well as creating the initial settop box/web prototype used to successfully raise VC funding.

In July 2007 I moved to Joost, the startup founded by Niklas Zennstrom and Janus Friis of Skype and Kazaa fame. My initial position, Director of Platform Development, primarily involved setting up a new joint venture with Tom.com, a Chinese media portal. I managed the creation of a separate Chinese-language Joost client, together with the externalization of Joost’s editorial and content management tools for use by the Chinese partner. I then moved to become Product Manager for Content, responsible for all content-owner facing roadmaps.

I currently work as Director of Portfolio Development for Digital Science in London. We fund and incubate startups in the scientific research space, with my role primarily focussed on mentoring the founders. Some call this an entrepreneur in residence role.

Specialties:Strategy, product definition, planning, business development, commercial and delivery functions. Broad experience in IPTV, broadband TV, interactive TV, social networking and web, building and leading teams to deliver multi-platform strategies and solutions.